tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post1042150756521468232..comments2014-06-16T16:19:22.726-05:00Comments on Tenured Radical: Battle Hymn Of The Queer Tiger Aunt: Or, How Amy Chua Made Me Think About FeminismTenured Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05703980598547163290noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-68022213773072754452012-04-23T02:52:30.615-05:002012-04-23T02:52:30.615-05:00Great article, it was very helpful! I just started...Great article, it was very helpful! I just started in this and I&#39;m getting to know it better! Cheers, keep up the good work!Logo Designhttp://www.logodesignuniverse.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-46981561268771593432012-04-04T05:04:51.326-05:002012-04-04T05:04:51.326-05:00Hi – I am so delighted I found your blog, I really...Hi – I am so delighted I found your blog, I really found you by accident, while I was researching on Digg for something else. Nonetheless I am here now and would just like to thanks for a fantastic post and an all round interesting blog (I also love the theme/design)Ready-Made Logohttp://www.logodesignuniverse.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-21100089662129141012012-03-19T02:20:15.264-05:002012-03-19T02:20:15.264-05:00Hello admin, Excellent article. You have gained a ...Hello admin, Excellent article. You have gained a fresh reader. Please keep them coming and I look forward to more of your superb articles. Thanks a lot....Facebook and Twitter Marketinghttp://www.ebrandster.com/facebook-twitter-marketing.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-72579646987144664152011-01-28T12:15:44.431-05:002011-01-28T12:15:44.431-05:00This brings back many interesting memories from ch...This brings back many interesting memories from childhood. One thing that&#39;s always struck me is how resilient children are. I needed little encouragement when I was struggling to master violin and piano pieces (and musical composition), but my feelings really got hurt if I put on an excellent performance and got only a dismissive remark in response. That&#39;s the pain that sticks with me.<br /><br />The problem here seems to be one of extremes. The parent who expects too much and the one who expects too little do damage in different ways. Hearing &quot;I know you can do it&quot; or even &quot;I know you can do better&quot; is something most kids can handle. Speaking from past experience, I think most kids have a burning desire to succeed, and need to recognize this and show it. The problems start when the parent becomes selfish and uses the child to meet his/her ego needs.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-44033546021754939392011-01-25T03:12:04.274-05:002011-01-25T03:12:04.274-05:00Reading this post made my brain swim with ideas ab...Reading this post made my brain swim with ideas about how feminism crept into the mainstream to be inclusive of males and their contribution to the creation of offspring. Which lead me to probably one of the BIGGEST pet peeves I have (besides the existence of the MPAA): that males who impregnate females feel the privilege of claiming/boasting by using a phrase like, &quot;we are pregnant&quot;, or &quot;when we were pregnant...&quot;.<br />Let me set the record straight for the parties involved in the pregnancy: ONLY FEMALES ARE PREGNANT OR CAN GET PREGNANT. THIS IS A FACT. And, no amount of Feminist empathizing on the part of any male allows him to own one of the rare things that makes the genders unique. To do so is just simply obnoxious behavior- not enlightened male sensitivity.joey britehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11103010112125433789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-63630422747862172902011-01-23T21:55:21.347-05:002011-01-23T21:55:21.347-05:00&quot;What it means to be the bridge between the i...&quot;What it means to be the bridge between the immigrant generation and a generation which grows up in privilege and security&quot;<br /><br />Yes, this!<br /><br />I think that sort of dynamic might also apply to class mobility; even when they&#39;ve grown up in the same country, there&#39;s a big difference between growing up working-class and growing up stably middle-class.<br /><br />I think in my own family, the &quot;bridge&quot; generation was actually two generations: my great-grandmother was the immigrant, my grandmother was the &quot;bridge&quot; between her immigrant mother and her wholly Americanized daughter, while my mother is the &quot;bridge&quot; between her more working-class childhood and my middle-class one.<br /><br />I was trying to think of a way to allude to this in the last thread, with Comrade PhysioProf&#39;s comment about students thinking of education in purely instrumental terms. I wanted to say something about how, at the state-school and junior-college levels, that instrumentality is tied up with ambitions of class mobility, which often bubble up through the generations. Like, a student who is the first in their family to go to college might feel an obligation to their family to pursue a more lucrative, technical degree program than something they might be really interested in but might not translate as readily into a middle-class career path.<br /><br />I know that in my family, there was a fairly strong assumption that we would all study science or engineering, and then go to work in those fields.Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10860246538349067232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-90285679268888701782011-01-23T21:13:04.069-05:002011-01-23T21:13:04.069-05:00TR, would you consider posting some of your respon...TR, would you consider posting some of your responses to G. Canada&#39;s presentation that you brought up on Saturday? I felt these were very strong, especially criticism of hyper-masculinized language, a spot-on critique I had not heard before.Impressionable youngsternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-62554009149044338152011-01-23T01:53:14.435-05:002011-01-23T01:53:14.435-05:00Thanks for the clarification. I had suspected that...Thanks for the clarification. I had suspected that this was a descriptive rather than a normative statement, and as such I fully agree: as per Katrina&#39;s comment about fathers &quot;babysitting&quot; their own children, our society is full of a**holes, who shouldn&#39;t be lavished with praise just for contributing to a partnership that ought to be equal. Indeed, nothing is more irritating than &quot;news&quot; stories about stay-at-home fathers as unusual and extraordinary.Adjunct Papanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-1404305205489701112011-01-22T19:45:38.072-05:002011-01-22T19:45:38.072-05:00I really enjoyed this and agree with you that femi...I really enjoyed this and agree with you that feminists need to get working on this one! As I read your post, one thing that struck me was that perhaps we need to talk about &quot;mothering&quot; less and &quot;parenting&quot; more. Only women can &quot;mother,&quot; but both men and women can &quot;parent,&quot; &quot;raise children&quot;, &quot;be primary caregivers,&quot; whathaveyou. If we want to break down the parenting double standard, that is one place to start. Out with the &quot;Mommy Wars&quot; and in with the &quot;Parent Wars!&quot;Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-60719996841894822682011-01-22T15:43:31.130-05:002011-01-22T15:43:31.130-05:00A cursed profession. Indeed!
Something that&#39;l...A cursed profession. Indeed!<br /><br />Something that&#39;ll be part of my paper for the Berks in June: consider the verbs &quot;to mother&quot; and &quot;to father&quot;. Mothering is an ongoing action, often fraught with a sense of stifling or coddling. Fathering is almost purely generative in our language. These differences have been in our language since at least the fifteenth century: what does that say about the Anglophone world?<br /><br />I probably will break down and read this at some point because, while it&#39;s far past my research period, the book sounds as if it would provide a valuable perspective for my current research subject. Dangit!Janicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14093558563358431804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-22135561664163813192011-01-22T15:40:53.988-05:002011-01-22T15:40:53.988-05:00Interesting timing - i&#39;ve just read Eve Sedgwi...Interesting timing - i&#39;ve just read Eve Sedgwick&#39;s fabulous essay on the queerness of aunts and uncles, &quot;Tales of the Avunculate&quot;. I can&#39;t not cite it: <br /><br />&quot;..it&#39;s often common for [aunts and uncles] to have the office of representing nonconforming or nonreproductive sexualities to children. ... [having aunts and uncles also means] perceiving your parents as someone&#39;s sibs - not, that is, as alternately abject and omnipotent links in a chain of compulsion and replication that leads inevitably to *you*; but rather as elements in a varied, contingent, recalcitrant but re-forming seriality, as people who demonstrably could have turned out very differently (indeed, have already done so.)&quot; <br /><br />Yeah, Eve. You always nailed it.LouMacnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-25533779490827785962011-01-22T10:40:20.753-05:002011-01-22T10:40:20.753-05:00Tenured Radical, how dare you write the best post ...Tenured Radical, how dare you write the best post on modern motherhood I&#39;ve read in the past year, when <i>you don&#39;t have children, so you can&#39;t possibly know what it&#39;s like!!!</i><br /><br />Seriously, effing brilliant. And I agree with CPP on Chua&#39;s publicist (although I don&#39;t think there&#39;s any particular genius in revving people up to attack a woman&#39;s mothering strategies, for all of the reasons you suggest in your post.) I&#39;m sure the vitriol of the personal attacks has taken Chua aback, but she&#39;s moving lots of product this month and can take that to the bank.Historiannhttp://historiann.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-89778357660666555962011-01-22T10:13:43.688-05:002011-01-22T10:13:43.688-05:00Interesting response. Those interested in the his...Interesting response. Those interested in the history and sociology of parenting culture might want to look into the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent in Canterbury--they have an interesting blog and interesting conferences, although very European focused. Their emphasis is on understanding the culture that produces ideas about parenting, such as our own &quot;intensive parenting&quot; culture.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-26122741701738945352011-01-22T09:36:50.335-05:002011-01-22T09:36:50.335-05:00Interesting post. You appear to have rediscovered ...Interesting post. You appear to have rediscovered the socio-emotional consequences, elaborated decades ago by sociologists Sarbin and Allen, of ascribed vs. achieved identities.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01700613758173676196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-20487085444174211132011-01-22T07:53:16.472-05:002011-01-22T07:53:16.472-05:00Very interesting post. Here are a few thoughts:
(...Very interesting post. Here are a few thoughts:<br /><br />(1) Chua&#39;s publicity operation is fucken brilliant, and they deserve some kinde of marketing nobel prize, if there is such a thinge.<br /><br />(2) I&#39;ve obviously never been a mother, but I have been a child and brother of a sister. Based on those experiences, I have arrived at the following two-part theory of parenting: (a) So long as you provide a materially and educationally secure environment, the best thinge you can do is be loving and encouraging and stay the fucke out of the way of your kiddes. (b) Complicated systems of intrusive parenting have a lot more down-side potential than up-side.<br /><br />(3) I thinke you meant &quot;mantle&quot;, not &quot;mantel&quot;.Comrade PhysioProfhttp://physioprof.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-86256788806251670872011-01-22T07:18:05.625-05:002011-01-22T07:18:05.625-05:00Fathers are definitely judged on a different plane...Fathers are definitely judged on a different plane. We have the &quot;bad&quot; fathers who are (stereotypically) either absent or criminally abusive. The father who is both present and benign is considered &quot;good&quot; in a model that critiques parenting based on the mother&#39;s performance. <br /><br />Re. Adjunct Papa&#39;s comments, I have also heard men referring to looking after their OWN CHILDREN as &quot;babysitting&quot; as though it&#39;s not really their job to do so. <br /><br />The flip side is the assumption that a father&#39;s role is primarily financial (look at the image of &quot;dead-beat dads&quot;: he knocked a gal up and wouldn&#39;t GIVE HER MONEY, nothing about them having any personal emotional obligation to the children.)Katrinahttp://www.katrinagulliver.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-28718077839756133912011-01-22T06:53:53.067-05:002011-01-22T06:53:53.067-05:00Adjunct Papa:
I used that phrase because I honest...Adjunct Papa:<br /><br />I used that phrase because I honestly don&#39;t believe our society has a grasp of what parenting would look like if it were free of the gender paradigm (the example you used is a pointed piece of evidence.) Because of the state of play of feminism nowadays, I confess that *I* don&#39;t have much of a grasp of how sentient hetero couples are working to free their relationships from sexism either. Much of that work is very private, when it occurs, and there is no public conversation about it that is structured (however insidiously) like the Mommy wars.<br /><br />Paradigms of heteronormativity are extraordinarily powerful too, as your anecdote suggests. Indeed, when I am in public with my nephews, people not only identify them as my &quot;sons&quot; but are effusive about how striking our physical resemblance is. (NB: biologically, we are entirely unrelated.)<br /><br />In my experience, when women speak of mothering they mean something very specific that *is* very gendered and essentialist. That said, the push of the normal is a weight on all of us. I doubt that men who genuinely give themselves up to childcare expect excessive praise, if their commitment to building a non-sexist family is genuine. But oh boy, do they get it! Hence the fact that newspaper stories about and memoirs by stay at home dads are considered newsworthy and marketable.Tenured Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05703980598547163290noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-40043437455992775642011-01-22T02:10:38.623-05:002011-01-22T02:10:38.623-05:00Long-time reader and first-time commenter. This is...Long-time reader and first-time commenter. This is tangential to your post, and in general the valuation of parenting as a &quot;job&quot; is surely, both historically and currently, an issue that overwhelmingly impacts women. I further understand that you are only indirectly relating the stakes of the &quot;Mommy Wars,&quot; but how does &quot;fathering&quot; fit into this? Given our culture&#39;s pervasive sexism, I can handle some sarcastic comments taken at my gender&#39;s expense, but your phrasing seems to suggest that men can only perform &quot;acts that are similar to mothering,&quot; for which we then expect excessive praise. Is there not an unwitting essentialism being reproduced in this term, &quot;mothering&quot;? If I do everything in my daughter&#39;s upbringing except breastfeed, am I only playing at the real job of mothering? As a former stay-at-home father, this frankly reminded me of several instances when, for example, a grocery store checker asked my daughter and I if we were &quot;helping mommy out today,&quot; as of course dads don&#39;t normally shop, change diapers, or do other tasks of which I&#39;m presumed to be incapable.<br /><br />As several commenters mentioned on the previous post, fathers seem to be entirely absent from the larger Chua controversy; this pro-daughter (pro-feminist, pro-queer...) dad would love to hear the Radical&#39;s thoughts.Adjunct Papanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-61766261731328107822011-01-21T21:54:53.060-05:002011-01-21T21:54:53.060-05:00&quot;...no such thing as a good mother, just a lo...&quot;...no such thing as a good mother, just a lot of women claiming to be better mothers than each other based on some floating standard. That is something feminism also needs to deal with.&quot;<br /><br />Or: no such thing as a good mother, just a lot of women panicking that they aren&#39;t doing it right.<br /><br />Yes: feminism needs to deal with this! Great post, TR.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-26375948775928914102011-01-21T20:03:31.070-05:002011-01-21T20:03:31.070-05:00Count me as another loving auntie, not just to my ...Count me as another loving auntie, not just to my blood relations, but to the children of friends (who, to my delight, and without my prompting, refer to me in front of their children as &quot;Auntie Notorious). Honestly, I think that two parents aren&#39;t enough. And it&#39;s good for the kids to have someone model a non-heteronormative or non-couple-centric life, so they can see lots of acceptable and wonderful ways to build a life.<br /><br />And yes -- it lets me experience (on a part-time basis) many of the joys of &quot;raising&quot; children without all the obligations, so it&#39;s great for me, too. Kids win, parents win, I win. What could be better.<br /><br />Hooray for eccentric aunties!Notorious Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08700875559325201086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-50642181707034653782011-01-21T19:59:23.586-05:002011-01-21T19:59:23.586-05:00Being a mother is the hardest job I&#39;ve ever ev...Being a mother is the hardest job I&#39;ve ever ever ever done. There is no way to do it right. There may be ways to do it wrong, but they are pretty extreme. Somehow, we survive. But it ain&#39;t easy.lizahttp://www.dykeaquarterly.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36212542.post-55697964642312000702011-01-21T19:35:10.876-05:002011-01-21T19:35:10.876-05:00Your point about considering how to make girls con...Your point about considering how to make girls confident and strong is important. <br /><br />I was raised by an Amy Chua-type mother. I&#39;m not Asian (other than a random Chinese great grandparent) but my mother was an immigrant. I&#39;ve got some pretty strong feelings about Chua&#39;s parenting style. I think that level of inflexibility can do huge damage to children when it isn&#39;t sensibly moderated. (On the other hand, I&#39;m not sure if, when I&#39;m a parent, I could be of the lax school either. Life isn&#39;t about prizes, as my mother would say.)<br /><br />However, one of the things that has become clear as I&#39;ve matured into adulthood is that my mother, who was a conservative woman against feminism, managed to instill a level of confidence in me about my capabilities. The corollary to being raised by someone so demanding is that that person expects you to reach the highest possible standards regardless of your gender. The idea that I couldn&#39;t do whatever I set my mind to never crossed my mind, because my parents were operating under the assumption that I could. They were going to push me to that level.<br /><br />And while there are some significant downsides to a parent shutting down all possibility of romantic relationships during teenage years, the one benefit was that I never fell into the trap of dumbing myself down or downplaying my capabilities to attract men. More importantly, my mother encouraged me to be friends with guys, so I&#39;ve always viewed men as colleagues on the same level as myself. College wasn&#39;t about men, it was about getting an education. <br /><br />My mother made me read Dickens and banned fairy tales, which means that I never fantasized about princes swooping in to save the day, after which we&#39;d ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. And given that part of my mother&#39;s conservatism was her evangelical background, it&#39;s pretty shocking that she explicitly told me that I shouldn&#39;t get married until I was 30, at least.<br /><br />So I do think that there&#39;s something to think about: how do we raise strong women who are unencumbered with the toxic messages our society throws at them?thefrogprincesshttp://thefrogprincess.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com